Czolgosz, the assassin, does not
find any of our foreign contingents in this country ready to admit that he is
one of their number. In our issue for September 21
we said that “current reports have represented that he is of Polish blood, tho
of American birth,” but added that “a number of Polish societies and journals
of this country have repudiated the idea of his Polish nationality, claiming
that he is a Russian Hebrew.” This claim is now disputed by a Cleveland rabbi,
who encloses clippings from the Cleveland papers to show that the assassin’s
parents are Polish Catholics, born in Prussia. The brother of the assassin,
as reported in an interview in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, says: “We
are of Polish descent, altho some people are trying to make out that we are
Russians”; and his father says that he was “born and raised at Innowraclaw,
County of Posen, in Western Prussia.” The assassin himself was born in Detroit.
The Jewish papers speak very feelingly in regard to the insinuation that Czolgosz
is a Hebrew. The American Israelite (Cincinnati), for example, says:

“While no one will blame the Poles for trying
to prove that the assassin was neither their countryman nor a coreligionist,
their action in stating that he was a Russian Jew, when they were in absolute
ignorance of the facts, was detestable—their silence since they have become
well-informed is vile. Their failure to come forward like men and admit
their mistake is cowardly and will not easily be forgotten. We speak of
this subject once more, as we want to warn the Jews of America first and
then all honest people that an attempt is being made to falsify history,
to put upon those of the Jewish faith a part of the odium of the infamous
act of the assassin, without the slightest warrant in fact as an excuse
for doing so. Let it be remembered that not only is Czolgosz not a Jew,
but also that none of those who are [459][460]
being mentioned as prominent Anarchists are Jews. The foreign sound of Polish,
Russian, Slavonic, Galician, etc., names is misleading. None of this canaille
is part or parcel of American Jewry.”